News Releases

Expert on Ethnic Interactions Within Communities to Give Talk at Ithaca College

ITHACA, NY — The Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity (CSCRE) at Ithaca College is hosting a talk on Monday, March 18, by George Sanchez, an expert on ethnic interactions within communities. His talk, “The Power and Possibilities of Multiracial Communities: Bridges and Borders in Boyle Heights, California,” will be held at 7 p.m. in Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall. It is free and open to the public.

An award-winning scholar of Chicano history and immigration, Sanchez is the director of the University of Southern California Center for Diversity and Democracy as well as the vice dean for diversity and strategic initiatives and a professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History in USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Sanchez’s historical study of the ethnic interaction of Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans and Jews in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles demonstrated that multiracial communities could be established in a time of extreme racism, and that Boyle Heights set a standard by which other American cities could judge their own progress.

The series coeditor of “American Crossroads: New Works in Ethnic Studies” from the University of California Press, Sanchez is the author of “Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945.” He is a former president of the American Studies Association and serves on minority scholars committees of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association.

The CSCRE fosters dialogues on issues pertaining to race through its annual discussion series. The theme for this year’s series is “Suffocating Knowledge: Race, Power, Possibilities.” For more information, visit www.ithaca.edu/cscre.